Harvard In Congress

Be nice to that overeager Gov 20 section guy, for like many on Congress’ current roster, he may someday take the well-traveled road from Harvard to the Hill.

Harvard has graduated more members of the 111th Congress than any other university, according to a recent article in U.S. News & World Report. Fifteen members of the current congressional roster boast a Harvard undergraduate degree, including Barney Frank ’62 (D-MA) and Al Franken ’73 (D-MN). Many others hold degrees from HBS or HLS.

Yale, Stanford, and UCLA follow Harvard in number of degree-holding congressmen.

All in all, 95 percent of today’s lawmakers hold at least a bachelor’s degree. About 8 percent of the 533 members of the current roster earned a degree at an Ivy League school, according to the U.S. News & World Report.

But despite the quantity of Harvard degrees on Capitol Hill, some members of Congress are questioning the quality of a training program that sends government workers to the Harvard Kennedy School for its Senior Executive Fellows program— a course that costs taxpayers more than $18,000 per enrolled employee.

The Kennedy School offers more than 25 open enrollment Executive Education programs. The government spends about $5 million a year on Harvard training programs, according to the article. Total money spent on high-level executive training by U.S. organizations approached $2.8 billion in 2007, also quoted by the article.